We're Not So Jolly About Common Core Clark - Vote NO For Clark Jolley For State Treasurer

Clark Jolley at the Jeb Bush, Foundation for Education Excellence National Summit on Education Reform in Boston, MA with former Oklahoma State Board of Education member Amy Ford. 

Clark Jolley was the lead author of the bill that adopted Obama-pushed Common Core State Standards throughout Oklahoma.

Does Our State Superintendent Truly Care About Student Privacy?

Readers of our blog and our research know we have worked very hard to describe the ways in which the state government is working toward feeding the federal government individual student data collected from public schools thanks to our state's love for federal programming (see the bottom of this post for links).  You might remember one of our more nationally popular memes (it was re-tweeted by Anthony Cody of EdWeek) was the Four Pillars of America's Education Takeover:

The Four Pillars show the relationship of the State Longitudinal Database System (SLDS) to all other major education 'reforms' endorsed by the Obama Administration since 2009, now being utilized in nearly every state in the Union.

Today, I got an email message from the CEDS (Common Education Data Standards - the group creating the 'common' identifiers that all states can use to share student data across state lines) and I wanted to share it:

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is pleased to announce the release of Common Education Data Standards (CEDS) Version 4.  CEDS is a national collaborative effort to develop voluntary, common data standards for a key set of education data elements to streamline the exchange, comparison, and understanding of data within and across P-20W institutions and sectors.  CEDS Version 4 includes a broad scope of elements spanning much of the P-20W spectrum and provides greater context for understanding the standards' interrelationships and practical utility.  Version 4 includes 1,346 unique elements including 236 new elements and 85 updated elements.

A new resource is available with the release of Version 4: CEDS Extend. Now users can view NCES Handbook data elements alongside CEDS elements as part of the CEDS searchable data elements and the Domain Entity Schema.  Also included in this release are 15 tutorials on using CEDS Align and Connect as well as an expanded list of publications describing how to use CEDS (and more examples are coming).

Version 4 of CEDS can be found at the CEDS website:  http://ceds.ed.gov

The CEDS website includes three ways to view and interact with CEDS:

1. By element: Via the Elements page, users can access a searchable glossary of the CEDS "vocabulary," including names, definitions, option sets, technical specifications, and more.
2. By relationship: Through the CEDS Data Model, users can explore the relationships that exist among entities and elements-viewable both through a logical data model.
3. By comparison: Supplemental tools enable users to take the next step and put CEDS into practice. CEDS ALIGN allows a user to load his or her organization's data dictionary and compare it, in detail, to CEDS and the data dictionaries of other users' organizations. This facilitates alignment with CEDS and across systems, paving the way for easier sharing and comparison of data. CEDS CONNECT enables users at different levels to consider "connections" such as metric definitions of data points, policy questions, or federal data reporting requirements by establishing the data elements necessary to answer a given connection, as well as recommend logic and routines for analysis.

Guess what?  All these 'elements' this email lauds so happily, are named fields that can be used to directly identify YOUR public school CHILD in a national database - fields like, "voting status" or "religious affiliation".

Julia and Lynn have gone to nearly all of Oklahoma's P20W (P = PreK, 20 = 20 years, W = workforce) meetings where participants discuss ways in which Oklahoma can comply with the federal government's need for student data.  They have taken notes and have audio recordings of these proceedings to prove these people care not at all about your children, but simply what your children can provide the federal government in terms of information about themselves and your family all to create newer and better (and more restrictive) federal programming none of which is needed to educate children.

Here was the kicker for today.  Just a few hours ago, Lynn sent me a Facebook message with the following link, "Formal Response To The Chief State School Officers' Letter On Student Privacy".  The response was from a group called Education Liberty Watch, run by a woman named Karen Ephraim M.D., whom I have interviewed for School Reform News, and who happens to be a clinical psychiatrist.  I have personally followed Education Liberty Watch for a number of years and have been educated on a much deeper level about the issues inside public education than I have with commercial publications such as EdWeek (who provides education news by taking money from Bill Gates, among others)  Dr. Ephraim took the letter - signed by 34 Chief State School Officers - and dissected it thoroughly - as any good physician would.

I am not going plumb her analysis here because I essentially agree, and you can read it yourself through the link I have provided.  Though this letter really means nothing much at all in reality - in exactly the same way Governor Fallin's Executive Order on Common Core meant nothing in reality - as Dr. Ephraim points out, these Chiefs very stridently inform Secretary Arne Duncan;

We are writing today to confirm that the consortia will not share any personally identifiable information about K–12 students with USED or any federal agency.

As I read over the 34 names, I didn't find Dr. Barresi's name on the list anywhere!

I guess in one way I'm comforted, as I am fairly well exhausted of the OSDE's constant attempts to fool or finesse the facts about Oklahoma's school 'reform' platforms and programs.  However, it sticks in my craw that - even though the governor saw fit to at least try and 'finesse' the facts about data sharing and education reform through her CC Executive Order - Dr. Barresi didn't even BOTHER to try this time.  She just flat didn't sign the letter at all.

But then, after all, she is the one that hired John Kraman, the Executive Director of Student Information who has worked for The American Diploma Project and Achieve - the Washington, DC epicenters of these new federal education programs!  In fact, Mr. Kraman has told Lynn and Julia that he is here to do one job - create Oklahoma's State Longitudinal Database System - giving him little luxury to worry about the students involved.

Truly, this is WORSE than OBNOXIOUS!  This callous disregard for the CHILDREN involved in this massive data sharing 'collaboration' among states and the feds.  Though I advise EVERYONE to become educated on this topic, I certainly don't advise you joining any of the CEDS email strands or other the CEDS 'Sandbox' news alerts.  The disregard for the privacy of children and their families by this group that seems to WORSHIP data as a deity, is truly frightening.

Maybe Dr. Barresi didn't join the other 34 Chiefs because she knew the letter didn't mean much in the real world of state/federal entanglements, but then again, maybe her most expensive OSDE hire (Kraman) tells everything we need to know about where her loyalties lie.


SLDS/STUDENT PRIVACY INFORMATION

The State Longitudinal Database and Child Privacy - YouTube

An Analysis of Recent Education Reforms and the Resulting Impact on Student Privacy http://www.scribd.com/doc/94149078/An-Analysis-of-Recent-Education-Reforms-and-the-Resulting-Impact-on-Student-Privacy

How Much Data is Enough Data; what happens to privacy when bureaucracies exceed their scope?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/110458572/How-Much-Data-is-Enough-Data-What-happens-to-privacy-when-bureaucracies-exceed-their-scope

What Oklahomans Need to Know About The P20 Council
http://www.scribd.com/doc/124766370/What-Oklahomans-Need-to-Know-About-the-P20-Council

Oklahoma's A-F Grading System Get's An "F"

Recently I read, “An Examination of the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s A-F Report Card”, commissioned by the two largest professional school organizations in the state:  the Oklahoma School Boards Association (OSBA) and the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA).  If you kiddos out there haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, don’t worry, I’ll bet it will show up on the Common Core State Standards reading list with all those other exciting non-fiction reads kids are going to enjoy so much, but that’s another story.

I read the paper after reading the Daily Oklahoman editorial “Oklahoma Policymakers Shouldn’t Retreat From A-F grading System”, because it seemed a very partisan assessment.  Now don’t get me wrong, I have an opinion on this issue as well, in opposition.  After much study of the No Child Left Behind waiver (first request, final request) for which our state applied, our organization sent the offices of the State Superintendent and the Governor letters explaining why we were in disagreement.  

Our concerns stemmed from a number of sources.  As a Conservative organization, we objected to President Obama’s notion that he could ignore the Constitution and go around Congress to make his own law (waiver) simply because he believed Congress would not act to reauthorize the NCLB.   We also highly objected to the fact that results of the A-F system would cause districts to lose control of their schools to the State Department of Education and whatever contractor they saw fit to administrate those ‘failing’ schools.

It should be said, however, that after years of writing and researching education issues, I have become a near-complete cynic of either political party’s actual interest in education for the sake of educating children.  Consequently, I began to assess the article by first researching its authors.  

This gave me no sense of satisfaction as both were clearly entrenched in the University system and one is currently employed by an organization with clear Progressive leanings.  I moved on to research the origins of the citations made by the authors in support of their thesis.  Yuck.  Linda Darling-Hammond.  Darling-Hammond is a close friend of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, so anything she says is suspect to me.  Truly, from the beginning it didn’t seem as though I would find anything we could support in this assessment.

I have a Master’s Degree in Biology. In order to conclude my degree I was FORCED to take at least one statistics course.  Not only am I no statistician, I don’t even play one on TV, so reading the paper in its entirety was daunting.  Yet, once I began, I found most statistical jargon had been replaced by or supplemented with understandable correlations that could make sense to readers with even a basic understanding of statistical theory.

I was frustrated by my takeaway and here it is:  Any time authors of a research paper examining a particular statistical method articulate phrases such as, “perhaps a decision was made”, “no clear justification”, “basis undocumented”, “nonlinear relationship”, “basis assumes” and/or “threats to validity”, there is a problem – and not with the examiner, but the examinee.

It seems shocking, given the emphasis on STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) initiatives as a way for the Obama administration to pump more money into schools, that our own SDE doesn’t seem to understand the concepts of validity and replicability as part of scientific inquiry in any form – certainly in the creation of a statistical rubric the use of which can mean life or death of a school.

The rubric that determines the A-F letter category for each school is broken into four components; Student Achievement (33%), Individual Student Growth (17%), Growth of Bottom Quartile (17%) and Whole School Performance (33%). 

Let’s look at some of the most central concerns.

Calculation of Student Achievement

“The scores assigned to represent proficiency levels…do not seem to correspond to any recognizable metric”.  This goes to the necessity for a study to be replicable.  If a study cannot be replicated, it can’t be reliable.  In this case it was impossible for the authors to decide how the categories of Proficiency Levels were determined because there was “no clear justification” for why these categories were assigned.  This alone should be the nail in the coffin of this A-F system as categories used to assign specific value are apparently arbitrary. 

In addition, the “basis for letter grade conversion is undocumented”.  How is it that an “A” is designated as having the Performance Index Range of 90-120, but all other letter designations merit a 10 point range?  Again the sense of arbitrariness challenges the concept of validity.

       Individual Growth

      Proficiency Levels (Limited Knowledge, Satisfactory, Proficient and Advanced) are introduced into the metric to allow parents to make assumptions about student academic Growth within the school.  Proficiency Levels are assigned a numerical value and the subsequent changes in numerical value determine the degree of student academic Growth.  Because of the way Proficiency Levels are assigned in the rubric, there is no way to determine student grown within a proficiency level - “no change and negative change are accorded the same zero point value”.  

Students could go from the top of the Advanced category to the bottom, or from the bottom of the Limited Knowledge category to the top, yet no change would be reflected in the actual letter designation for the school.   Not only that, but because academic growth and proficiency levels are non-linear in nature, there can be no extrapolation from individual student to school or even classroom.  There is no way to make scientific conclusions about data that have no real cause and effect relationship.

Growth of Bottom Quartile

      Since this is a very small category, small sample size can introduce bias that may not be able to be corrected away by calculating a confidence interval, making the measure unreliable.

      Whole School Performance 

      Attendance alone determines this component in elementary schools.  This component is a full third of the entire rubric, yet there is absolutely no scientific study which shows that students learn simply by benefit of being present in a school.  How is this measure relevant?

I could continue critiquing the author’s critique, but frankly there is no reason.  As I said previously, the entire system should go the way of the Porcelain God based upon the fact that the majority of the categories and values assigned are neither replicable nor valid.

Though every informed citizen has (or should have!) an opinion about the practice of public education –education isn’t, nor should it be, a partisan issue.  It saddens us here at ROPE, however, that state establishment Republicans continually circle the wagons around our Superintendent and Governor as they push the big government ideals of the Obama Administration while marginalizing those of us who dare to contest this phenomenon.  Interesting, isn’t it?  One can only be educated by learning, and one can only learn by opening one’s mind to possibilities outside one’s own orthodoxy, yet, we see very little of that from Republican bureaucrats in Oklahoma dedicated to “education reform”.  We here at ROPE look forward to the day we are able to witness the Republican “education reform” establishment practice what they preach.  We can only ‘hope’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (in order of use)

Linn, Robert Lee and Sternberg, Robert J.   (January 2013) 32 pp.  An Examination of the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s A-F Report Card. http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/items/AFreportresearchstudy.pdf

Ravitch, Diane (Dec. 31, 2012)  Common Core And The Fiction Non-Fiction Question. http://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/31/common-core-and-the-fictionnon-fiction-question/

Editor, Daily Oklahoman Online. (Jan. 22, 2013) http://newsok.com/oklahoma-policymakers-shouldnt-retreat-from-a-f-grading-system/article/3747866

White, Jenni.   Bibliography, Literature List for NCLB Research http://www.scribd.com/doc/79042750/WebNotes-Literature-List-for-NCLB-NEW

Department of Education.  (Feb. 8, 2012) WWW2.Ed.Gov. http://www2.ed.gov/policy/eseaflex/approved-requests/ok.pdf

Oklahoma State Department of Education website.  (Feb. 8, 2012) Ok.Gov. http://ok.gov/sde/sites/ok.gov.sde/files/FinalRequest.pdf

Restore Oklahoma Public Education.   (Sept. 8, 2011) Letter to Education Officials – Please Do NOT Apply For An NCLB Waiver For Oklahoma.  http://www.scribd.com/doc/64376597/Letter-to-Education-Officials-Please-Do-NOT-Apply-for-an-NCLB-Waiver-for-Oklahoma

Kelsey, Mike and Grimard, Leslie.  (Sept. 27, 2011)  Obama Waives Congress Away.  Heritage Foundation.  http://blog.heritage.org/2011/09/27/obama-waives-congress-away/

Restore Oklahoma Public Education.  (May 2, 2012) A-F Grading System Disapproval. http://www.scribd.com/doc/92729432/Disapproval-of-a-F-Grading-System

Chumley, CC.  (May 1, 2007)  No Shock, Just Facts: Liberal Indoctrination on Campus.  Human Events.  http://www.humanevents.com/2007/05/01/no-shock-just-facts-liberal-indoctrination-on-campus/

Garner, Donna.  (January 6, 2013)  Linda Darling-Hammond and Bill Ayers are closely associated with Columbia Teachers’ College where the social justice agenda is heavily enmeshed throughout the College.  Education News online.  http://educationviews.org/linda-darling-hammond-bill-ayers-cscope-lucy-calkins-ccs/

www.WhiteHouse.gov.  (Nov. 23, 2009)  President Obama Launches “Educate to Innovate” Campaign for Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) Education. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-launches-educate-innovate-campaign-excellence-science-technology-en

Shuttleworth, Martyn.  (2008)  The Principles of Validity and Reliability are Fundamental Cornerstones of the Scientific Method.  Explorable.com  http://explorable.com/validity-and-reliability.html

White, Michael.  (Dec. 29, 2010)  Scientific Method in Decline?  Science2.0.com  http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity/scientific_method_decline

Some Races Just Shouldn’t Be Run

Some Races Just Shouldn’t Be Run

According to a NewsOK editorial July 27 (Editorial Staff), Oklahomans should be stunned that our state hasn’t yet announced its intentions to appeal to the Obama administration for a piece of the additional $500 million (Schlafly) tax payer dollars set aside by the Federal Department of Education to fund a Race to the Top Early Learning grant. If won, money from this grant could be used to fund programs in Oklahoma, like EduCare, founded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser even joined with the Obama administration in announcing the contest (Editorial Staff)- quite appropriate as Kaiser is a key Obama fundraiser (Carol D. Leonnig).

For the record, this is the same Kaiser Foundation whose lobbyist Margaret Erling confronted a State Senator on (McGuigan) the floor of the Senate about a bill to push back the date for Kindergarten two months (P. B. McGuigan)and the same organization who lobbied for and pushed Obamacare (Pinkerton) through the Oklahoma Department of Health and Human Services (Blatt).

Though Kaiser believes early education to be a moral obligation and the "most effective way to reverse the cycle of poverty in America" (Rolland), even his fellow progressives don’t agree philosophically on the role of education in poverty (Bernstein).

US Census data shows that poverty is directly correlated with marriage status (Wikipedia). Traditional families have 5% poverty rates –single parent families 26%. Wouldn’t private programs centered on incentivizing and strengthening the family unit be much more effective in reducing poverty in the United States than putting all ‘underserved’ infants through four year olds in publicly funded PreK programs?

Phyllis Schlafy concludes (Schlafly), "The premise that poverty causes illiteracy is fundamentally wrong. In the 18th and 19th centuries when Americans were pitifully poor by today's standards, we had almost complete literacy." In fact, since LBJ introduced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, states have been given over 116 BILLION (Schlafly) tax payer dollars (in addition to those supplied at the state/county level) for educational efforts, yet by 2003 this system has produced a literacy proficiency rate of only 13% in graduates (adults) (U.S. Department of Education).

Cato Institute sees this new round of RTT as “a recipe for the ultimate federal control of pre-K” (McCluskey) and how could it not be so? When the federal government takes money from states, then makes states apply to get the money back based on the fulfillment of specific government-ordered criteria, the government is now in control. This is Statism (Wikipedia, Statism) – the complete antithesis of our American Founder’s prescription of Federalism (Olivastro)and the principles of the Republican Party (Party). Why in the world would the Republicans newly elected as Governor and State Superintendent of Public Instruction apply for a program that is essentially a slap in the face to their constituency?

Lastly, with households getting more money from the federal government than they are giving (Cooper) and our national debt increasing nearly 4 billion dollars daily (U.S. National Debt Clock), indebting our nation in order to administer, “…top-down directives forcing states to adopt programs favored by Washington” (McNeil) would seem in opposition not only to the tenets of our Constitutional Republic, but plain old common sense fiscal reality.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Jared. "Main Page." 22 April 2007. The American Prospect. 16 August 2011 .

Blatt, David. "Healthcare." 6 October 2010. OKCPolicyBlog. 16 August 2011 .

Carol D. Leonnig, Joe Stephens and Alice Crites. "Post Politics." 25 June 2011. Washington Post. 16 August 2011 .

Cooper, James C. "Columns." 18 April 2011. Fiscal Times. 16 August 2011 .

Editorial Staff. "Editorial Page." 27 July 2011. NewsOk. 16 August 2011 .

—. "Editorial Page." 2 June 2011. NewsOk. 16 August 2011 .

McCluskey, Neal. "CATO at Liberty." 26 May 2011. CATO Institute. 16 August 2011 .

McGuigan, Pat. "Capitol Beat OK." 18 May 2011. Capitol Beat OK. 16 August 2011 .

McGuigan, Patrick B. "Capitol Beat OK." 16 May 2011. Capitol Beat OK. 16 August 2011 .

McNeil, Michele. "Politics K12." 1 June 2011. Education Week. 16 August 2011 .

Olivastro, Richard. "Opinion." 16 September 2010. The Daily Caller. 16 August 2011 .

Party, The Republican. Statement of Principles. 2011. 16 August 2011 .

Pinkerton, James P. "Serious Medicine Strategy." 21 September 2010. Google Blog. 16 August 2011 .

Rolland, Megan. "News." 26 May 2011. NewsOK. 16 August 2011 .

Schlafly, Phyllis. The Phyllis Schlafly Report. April 2000. 16 August 2011 .

U.S. Department of Education. "Digest of Education Statistics." n.d. Institute of Education Sciences. 16 August 2011 .

U.S. National Debt Clock. 2011. 16 August 2011 .

Wikipedia. Poverty in the United States. 2010. 16 August 2011 .

—. Statism. 2011. 16 August 2011 .

Oh What A Tangled Web Oklahoma Weaves When First the Federal Government Practices to Deceive

It has come to our attention that our state's superintendent Dr. Janet Barresi and Governor Fallin are very interested in accepting No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waivers granted by the Obama administration.